Trump Revealed

by Michael Kranish

  In the early eighties, Res walked the sidewalks with Trump to meetings, making small talk about buildings or deals. By the end of the decade, when Trump went to lunch with other executives, he would surround himself with three security guards. The office had always been competitive, but the door to Trump’s inner lair had stayed open, even when he was making calls under the fake name John Barron. But after the first big successes, the mood around Trump began to change. He surrounded himself, Res said, with sycophants who applauded his moves rather than questioning his logic. “He was not the same Donald that you would sit and chew the fat with so much,” she said. “He doesn’t want to be argued with anymore. He’s too big a star.” He began drinking his diet sodas through a straw, and only when they came from Norma Foerderer, his executive assistant, because he was too afraid of others’ germs. Executives began calling Norma “the barometer.” If Donald was in his office in a particularly combative mood, she would stop visitors, saying, “Don’t go in there.”

  Trump’s demands seemed to shift into overdrive. One morning around two, while passing Trump Parc in his limo, Trump saw a soda can lying on the sidewalk near the entrance. He called Blanche Sprague, who oversaw project development for Trump, and told her, “Call me when it’s gone.” She got a superintendent to fix the problem, then called Trump to report back. “Then I got to sleep until six, when Donald called about something else,” she said. As his businesses grew and became more complicated, Trump’s temper flared. After being told a project was running behind schedule, he kicked a chair across a conference room. “He always has to have his way,” said Scutt, the architect.

  Some of his closest executives began to leave: Trump’s chief New York counsel, his top sales executive, his chief financial adviser; even Res, the engineer who had lifted his name into the sky, the woman he’d once anointed “Donna Trump.” But that was all behind the scenes. In public, Trump had become what he’d always wanted to be: a star. Playgirl magazine called him one of the sexiest men in America, and in March 1990, he adorned the cover of Playboy, brushing against a cover girl eyeing him adoringly. Trump’s wife didn’t push back against the cover photo, at least not in public, but some women in Trump’s offices were dismayed. “I think that was the beginning of the end of him being a serious businessman,” Res said. “And he moved into being a cartoon.” Undaunted, Trump relished the publicity. “The show is Trump,” he said, “and it is sold-out performances everywhere.”

  6

  * * *

  “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had”

  The show began back at the start of Trump’s career, when he built not only buildings but an image as the consummate dealmaker. In 1978, a young investigative reporter decided to explore the facts behind the image. Wayne Barrett hadn’t told anyone where he was going, so when the phone rang in the conference room of an obscure government agency where he was poring through documents, he ignored it. Barrett had a lot of work to do. Boxes and folders containing thousands of pages of records covered the table in front of him. Somewhere in these stacks, he suspected, were documents that would explain how a brash young developer from Queens had gotten the inside track on a series of big real estate deals in Manhattan. A few weeks earlier, veteran Village Voice journalist Jack Newfield had walked over to the thirty-three-year-old newbie reporter with an assignment: Trump was getting fawning press coverage portraying him as a self-made success and an urban visionary. Newfield, who had spent years covering the Brooklyn Democratic machine, saw not a precocious businessman, but a child of privilege playing off his father’s political connections in a city wracked by corruption.

  Barrett knew that a little-known government agency called the Urban Development Corporation had played a pivotal role in Trump’s deal to buy the derelict Commodore Hotel and turn it into the gleaming Grand Hyatt. Barrett asked to see all records connected to that deal. When Barrett got to the agency’s nondescript office in midtown Manhattan, an employee led him to this conference room, and an intimidating ocean of paper. Now the phone rang again. This time, an agency staffer ducked her head in and told Barrett the call was for him. As far as Barrett knew, the only people aware that he was in that room were the employees at the office. Puzzled, he picked up the phone. A stranger with a distinct Queens accent greeted him: “Wayne! This is Donald. I hear you’re doing a story on me.”

  “Like we were old buddies,” Barrett recalled. “We had never spoken.” Barrett, one of the first reporters to take a deep look at Trump’s deals, was about to become one of the first to experience a media strategy, then in its infancy, that would become familiar to reporters around New York, then across the country. As Barrett dug into Trump’s business over the next few months, Trump handled him with carrot and stick—attempts to ingratiate himself with the reporter, followed almost immediately by thinly veiled threats.

  First, the carrot. Barrett lived in Brownsville, then one of the poorest areas of Brooklyn. “I could get you an apartment,” Trump told Barrett. “That must be an awfully tough neighborhood.” Barrett replied that he chose to live in Brownsville and worked as a community organizer. “So we do the same thing!” Trump replied. “We’re both rebuilding neighborhoods. . . . We’re going to have to really get to know each other.” Then, the stick. “I’ve broken one writer,” Trump told Barrett another time. “You and I’ve been friends and all, but if your story damages my reputation, I want you to know I’ll sue.”

  While other developers might refuse interviews or issue carefully worded statements through publicists, Trump was almost never unavailable to talk for a few minutes or a few hours. One of Barrett’s first interviews with Trump, in his Fifth Avenue apartment, lasted three hours, ending only because Ivana Trump interrupted with a request to go to the opera. Even as it became clear that Barrett’s story would not be favorable, Trump’s demeanor altered only slightly. At their last interview, Trump read a prepared statement: “I really value my reputation and I don’t hesitate to sue. I’ve sued twice for libel. Roy Cohn’s been my attorney both times. I’ve won once and the other case is pending. It’s cost me one hundred thousand dollars, but it’s worth it.” Right after the stick, another carrot. Trump flashed a smile: “But everything’ll be all right. We’re going to get together after the story.”

  They did not get together after the story. Barrett’s article—published in two parts in 1979—was the first to reveal the prominent role that Fred Trump’s political connections and campaign contributions, along with legally questionable favors granted by government and bankruptcy-court officials, played in Donald’s meteoric rise. Trump’s response to the story was, compared to the media wars that would develop in the years to come, tame. He stopped taking Barrett’s calls, criticized him to other reporters.

  Barrett wasn’t entirely surprised by Trump’s carrot-and-stick strategy. Trump’s adviser was, after all, Roy Cohn, a man who, while combative with reporters, always saw the value of publicity, regardless of its tone. Cohn would often greet Barrett when the two bumped into each other, usually at the 21 Club, with a running tally of the damage the reporter had inflicted. “You’ve written thirty-four stories about me and you’ve never written a good word,” Cohn said one day. “You have no idea how much money you’ve made for me.”

  • • •

  IN HIS BOOK Trump: The Art of the Deal, Trump plainly spelled out his media philosophy, the product of three men who influenced him and New York’s unique media environment in the 1970s and 1980s—his father, Fred; developer William Zeckendorf; and Donald’s lawyer, Roy Cohn. Trump wrote:

  One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. . . . The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. I’ve always done things a little differently, I don’t mind controversy, and my deals tend to be somewhat ambitious. . . .

  Sometimes they write positively and sometim
es they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s really quite simple. If I take a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize a project, it might cost $40,000, and in any case, people tend to be skeptical about advertising. But if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of my deals, it doesn’t cost me anything, and it’s worth a lot more than $40,000.

  The funny thing is that even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business. . . . The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.

  I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

  Fred Trump knew the value of good publicity. As a young developer, he routinely sent out press releases promoting his latest projects, sometimes referring to himself as “Brooklyn’s Largest Builder.” Donald’s touch for the dramatic probably drew more inspiration, however, from another developer. Zeckendorf employed a press agent to keep his name in the papers, ideally in stories emphasizing his lavish lifestyle, or announcing outlandish building plans that never came to fruition, such as an airport atop buildings in Manhattan. As Donald started getting press in the late seventies, some reporters referred to him as a young Zeckendorf. Trump was flattered, even if Zeckendorf’s company did end up in bankruptcy.

  On November 1, 1976, readers of the Times were introduced to a flashy young developer who was moving ahead on three big projects (though none had actually been built). Headlined “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings,” the story was one of the first to draw the Trump/Zeckendorf parallel. Written by Judy Klemesrud, a society reporter, the story described a day in the life of “New York’s No. 1 real estate promoter of the middle 1970s.” Dozens of reporters after Klemesrud would learn the core challenge of covering Trump. As Barrett, one of his biographers, put it, “He was born with bullshit capabilities beyond what you and I could possibly imagine.” The Times profile gave Trump an early taste of how easy it was to use the media to burnish his reputation. Klemesrud reported that he had graduated first in his class at Wharton, which was untrue. The Times profile also noted that Trump called himself “publicity shy.” But it was Trump’s gift for self-promotion that appalled many of New York’s most prominent developers. Manhattan’s real estate barons—families such as the Rudins, Tishmans, Fishers, and Roses—saw little benefit to having their names in the papers. Trump struck them as a showboat. “He was an outsider in that group,” said Paul Goldberger, the Times’ architecture critic, “and never really became central to it. I think they were annoyed by him presenting himself as the most important, biggest builder in New York.”

  • • •

  TRUMP’S MOST IMPORTANT MENTOR in media as well as legal matters was Cohn, himself a lifelong student of the tabloid trade. As a thirteen-year-old, Cohn wrote a gossip column for the Bronx Home News, and while still a teen, he learned big-city newspapering from Leonard Lyons, a New York Post columnist. In his twenties, Cohn, by then a lawyer, helped enlist legendary gossip columnist Walter Winchell to promote Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against communist sympathizers. By the time Trump and Cohn crossed paths, Cohn’s media connections included publishers such as Si Newhouse and another man, an Australian whose expansion into the New York media market changed the city’s media culture just as a young real estate mogul was looking to generate free publicity.

  Gossip reporting has a storied tradition in New York, but in the early seventies, the art seemed nearly lost. The New York Daily Mirror had closed in 1963, and with that tabloid’s coarse voice silenced, the Daily News and the Post felt less drawn to salacious material. Then Rupert Murdoch came to town. In 1976, the Australian press baron bought the Post, then a liberal paper with an intellectual bent. Murdoch imported staffers from his other publications to lend the Post a different sensibility. The paper was soon blaring eye-grabbing headlines such as “Boy Gulps Gas, Explodes,” “500-Pound Sex Monster Goes Free,” and “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas.” Inside the paper, Murdoch created a full-page gossip sheet—Page Six—with a focus on celebrities’ romantic dalliances, nighttime wanderings, and personal indiscretions. “People sell the paper,” said the Post’s new editor, Roger Wood, and especially people from New York City. Gone were the days when gossip columnists fed mainly on Hollywood starlets three thousand miles away. Now, Page Six feasted on Manhattan media moguls, power brokers, and even real estate developers.

  One of Page Six’s first, most dependable sources was Cohn, who was friendly with both Murdoch and Wood. Claudia Cohen, an early Page Six reporter, started writing about the parties Roy threw, listing the names of judges who attended. This would have infuriated many lawyers. Not Cohn. “He loved it and started inviting me to cover every single party he had,” Cohen said. “He loved seeing his name on the page so much that he would also become a source for great stories. And nobody knew where more bodies were buried in New York City than Roy Cohn.” And Cohn had a young friend with a powerful desire to get his name in the papers.

  The journalism establishment sneered at the remade Post. The Columbia Journalism Review called the paper “a force for evil.” But Murdoch’s paper was flying off the newsstands, and competitors took notice. Across town at the News, Liz Smith, a gossip columnist who had previously focused on Hollywood, turned toward New York’s elite. One day, Smith recalled, she was in a car, headed up Park Avenue with her friend Parker Ladd, when Ladd mentioned a new power couple in town, a young building tycoon and his blond, Eastern European wife. It was the first time Smith heard two names that would one day become inextricably linked with hers. As the car neared a statue of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ladd asked Smith, “Have you ever met Ivana and Donald Trump?”

  • • •

  FOR DECADES, TRUMP’S DAILY morning routine included a review of everything written or said about him in the previous twenty-four hours. The clippings were usually culled by Norma Foerderer—for two decades Trump’s ever-present chief assistant—who also handed her boss a spiral notebook containing media requests, most of which he would handle himself. As his celebrity grew, the daily pile of Trump-related news coverage swelled; still, he diligently tried to review everything written or said about him. He often handed the positive pieces to other visiting journalists as examples of how to do it right. No matter how famous he became, no publication was too small for a kind word about Trump to go unnoticed. Trump handed a reporter from Fortune magazine a copy of New York Construction News in which Trump was named “owner and developer of the year.”

  Trump kept the negative stories, too. When Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky arrived for an interview, Trump’s desk was covered with a series of articles Barsky had written about the developer’s financial struggles. Trump flipped on a tape recorder, motioned to the articles, and told Barsky he had three sworn affidavits from people saying that the reporter was spreading rumors about Trump’s having a cash-flow problem. Trump informed Barsky that he’d already retained a prominent libel lawyer in anticipation of Barsky’s next piece. Then the interview began.

  While other business magnates hid behind publicists and spokespeople who put reporters off for as long as possible, Trump usually returned calls personally, within hours if not minutes. For some publications, Trump’s constant availability and interest in coverage crossed into annoyance. One year, when Fortune assembled its annual list of wealthy businesspeople, it assigned an intern to deal with the barrage of calls from Trump, who disagreed with the magazine’s assessment of his net worth.

  Trump inherited from his father a connection to one of New York’s most influential publicists, Howard Rubenstein, who
served as spokesman for many other prominent real estate barons. Rubenstein quickly found that the younger Trump didn’t need his help. Once Trump established himself as someone who mattered in media circles, virtually everything he and Ivana did was deemed newsworthy. When Daily News gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy ran an item about Trump cutting the ski-lift line in Aspen, they had two sources to verify the incident, including a ski resort employee. The day the item ran, Rush says he heard from an angry Trump: “It didn’t happen. This story is total bullshit. Who told you this? Whoever it was made it up. You tell him I said he’s a motherfucking liar. Tell him to call me. Whoever it is doesn’t have the balls because he knows I’ll beat the fucking shit out of him.”

  One summer, Jim Brady, an early Page Six editor, heard that Donald and Ivana had been granted a temporary summer membership at a club in East Hampton, where they were renting a home. The Trumps wanted to become permanent members, but Brady learned that the club’s board would never approve them. Brady put that news on Page Six and got a quick call from Trump. “He was cursing me with every four-letter word,” Brady said. “ ‘You SOB. You bleeping this. You bleeping that. I’m going to sue you. I’m going to sue the Post. I’m going to sue Murdoch. I’m going to sue everyone.’ ”